


Home Not Home

by Shadowed_Voices



Series: Gravity Falls AUs [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - A Tale of Two Stans, Post Episode: s02e11 Not What He Seems, allusions to torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-10 16:02:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4398302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowed_Voices/pseuds/Shadowed_Voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer has ended. People in Piedmont start noticing strange little things about the twins. Like severe emotional trauma, paranoia, and a high propensity for strange happenings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Yellow

2 September 2012 – Sunday

Two days ago, Dipper and Mabel Pines boarded a bus in Gravity Falls Oregon. It was their birthday, but that didn't matter. In the morning, Grunkle Stan and Uncle Ford and Wendy and Soos got together and gave them their gifts – matching black bands to wear on their left wrist filled with every happy memory and good wish the four could summon. Then, they helped the twins pack their backs – again – and drove them to the bus station.

Sues is not the driver this time, but a squirrel-y looking man with an actual squirrel stuffed in his pocket. The twins say nothing. They have no room to deny a man his comforts and quirks. Their own are...less fuzzy than a disgruntled but resigned rodent.

Yesterday, they arrived home, pale and sleepless, and could only stomach a single hug before Dipper managed to talk them upstairs. It was late. That was an excuse. No matter that they spent the night clinging to each other in a tent made of Dipper's faded blue comforter, matching breathing to the pulse of warmth from their bands.

 _We might not be there_ , _but we will never leave you._

When they were certain their parents slept, they crawled out of bed and began their work. Dipper crept downstairs, knife in hand, and scratched wards and curses and charms into everything he could remember their parents using regularly. Doors and windows and chairs, cupboards and drawers and the handrail. One he drew on the back of the family portrait in sharpie and blood.

_Don't look. Don't notice. Nothing's wrong. It's just your imagination._

Then he slipped back upstairs and carved the first of the territory wards on the outside of his door. A deterrent.

In that time, Mabel had emptied his room of everything but the essentials. She barricaded the bed – her mattress pilfered from her room and pressed next to his, both bed frames missing – behind their desks and dressers.

By morning, they can feel the effects of another night without sleep. Day five, actually. At the Mystery Shack they'd been able to grab five minutes here and there before nightmares jolted them back into wakefulness, but the stress of leaving their safe space denied them even that small respite.

Their parents greet them with smiles and cheer, same as yesterday, but they don't react with more than a flicker of concern when Mabel is unable to stop herself from flinching away from them, whimpering and hiding behind Dipper. They don't even frown when the twins scoot their chairs close that they can press together shoulder to hip as they pick at their waffles.

Not nearly as good as Grunkle Stan's waffles and their stomachs twist at the concept of food.

 _Rule one,_ Uncle Ford said, _is don't attract unnecessary attention._ They know, knew from the very beginning when Grunkle Stan told them he was unable to convince their parents to allow them to attend school up in Gravity Falls, that they will be unable to act as if nothing happened. Mabel is quiet, quiet, quiet – too quiet, predator quiet, eyes feral and fingers curled into claws more dangerous than they have any right to be. Dipper's quiet too, but it's not the same. Watching, waiting, finger poised on the trigger. And there's no telling what his weapon will be.

Together – they're always together now, too. They didn't used to be. Before this summer – three months of that stretched nearly three years of relative time, maybe, probably longer – the twins didn't have much to do with each other. Three months with only each other as company allows for some change, but nothing drastic.

By first grade, the twins were independent. They had different friends and different classes. Their interests started separating, as much as they can with six-year-old kids. By the time they were shipped off to Gravity Falls and Grunkle Stan and every wonderful, horrible thing that happened there – and elsewhere – they knew each other about as well as any other sibling would. Away from California, they clung to the familiar: each other. They grew close again, especially after the gnomes. But no one knows what happened after.

They don't eat much before an emergency call comes in from the office. Mom's client is panicking about something he misunderstood in the legalese of his contract. Dad needs to go with her because his secretary called about a new client refusing to leave until he gets to speak to Mr. Pines. Mabel slumps over the table. Dipper presses into her shoulder. They don't move until their parents are gone, door shut and car pulling away from the house.

Mabel curls her hand around the band and straightens, eyes focusing on something six inches to the right of Dipper's head. She nods like he said something and tips out of the chair, trotting silently upstairs. Dipper doesn't move for several minutes, not until the first thump of a bag hitting the ground reaches his ears. There will be, he knows, a mess of massacred yellow-gold-orange-not green wool is a shooting star on a field of pink. Rainbows. Purple stripes. He knows that somewhere in there will be a llama and a strawberry with sunglasses and a light bulb. There will be others, too; sweaters he hasn't seen, shirts he never paid attention to, and dresses that twirl. Their baby blankets. It will be a huge pile once she's finished.

Dipper levers himself to his feet and stumbles outside.

The backyard has a patio and a reasonably sized patch of what was once lush green grass. The recent drought and water restrictions have reduced it to a neatly trimmed, if dead, brown lawn. Dipper estimates a rough circle, gouging it into the dirt with a trowel he borrowed from the neighbor's shed. It's dusty work, but certainly not the most challenging, or even the most physically demanding, ward he's ever created. Just a couple dozen symbols, five pounds of salt, and a gallon of gasoline.

Mabel climbs out her window, carefully hopping down from the second floor rather than take the stairs. She'll have to take the stairs on the way back up. Her grappling hook is currently damaged beyond use – Dipper's going to fix that. The silly thing is indispensable.

They're not at their best when they pull open the bags and dump thirteen years of precious memories into the containment ward. Every drop of yellow in the entire house. Horrible reminders. Dipper's stomach threatens to expel the three bites of waffle he managed to eat. It's worse for Mabel. She presses her head between his shoulder blades, lending power she can't use to that he can power the ward.

Together, they douse the circle in gasoline and light the match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised Jan 1


	2. Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A single entity divided in two or more for the purpose of viewing.

2 September 2012 – Sunday

Thick as the ash clings to their skin, their clothes, for one brief moment their minds are clear. Certainty brings a sharp sort of clarity to their eyes – everything yellow, every scrap of cloth and paper and pen and paint – all of it is ash now. Gray and black and dull. It covers everything, but nothing remains of yellow within the house and even the dead-dying yellow-brown of the grass is now murky.

The purification ring glows bright cherry red and the containment wards pulse violet-blue beneath the soot, but nothing yellow remains. Nothing that might attract _Him_ exists within the house. Nothing at all.

Clarity and certainty and, for just a moment, peace.

Then they turn back to the sharp angles of a modern house. Off-white walls and hardwood floors. Stairs and doors and pictures of the perfect life they use to have before they went home and were brutally torn away. Twice.

It's truly unfortunate that they cannot live in a perfectly circular house.

The Shack isn't perfect, but that's the beauty of it. Two weeks ago when the twins managed to huddle together in the elevator up from Ford's lab – unwilling but knowledgeable of the necessity – and made their way into the triangular monstrosity that is the Mystery Shack, they found that they could control the transference in a familiar setting. They knew, if not every inch of the Shack, the main rooms and their room so well that it was more comfort than nightmare.

Here, this place that is supposed to be their home, nothing is familiar. Not now. Three months and three years of literal and relative time – they can forgive themselves for forgetting, but they can't stop the magic. Everything here is a danger, a beacon for _Him_. Colors, angles, objects. It'd take them years to carve enough wards – it took Uncle Ford building a house, twenty years, and a pissed off pack of teenagers beating up a unicorn to make the Shack as safe as it is.

It's nearing noon when the bonfire dies down. Ash and dust and magic. It fades from the wards, dissipating into the air and leaving the yard monotone. It leaves the twins too, tugging at Dipper's blood and the connection where Mabel presses into his back, offering her power.

Dipper knows that if she could, Mabel would be good with magic. Only half believing, she used Gideon's amulet and her battles in Grunkle Stan's mindscape proved everything, now that Dipper's had time to think about it – knows enough to realize. She has just as much innate magical talent as he does. But she can't use it. Not the way he does.

The twins slip inside once the wards stop glowing, shedding filthy clothes like so much dead skin, ash flaking into pale stars over their trail of footprints in the carpet. It's a mess. Obvious, if they cared, but they didn't clean up the backyard or the smoke lingering heavy and thick in the air. It's no more obvious than the carvings in the walls, or that they aren't sleeping in separate rooms any more – or that they aren't sleeping and hate touching others not each other and won't eat.

Keeping things more secret than absolutely necessary _here_ would be exhausting. They can't pretend. They don't even know where to start.

The water is cold, but no colder than rivers or garden hoses or the tank, and they scrub at skin until it's red and raw, murky bubbles clinging to the edges of the sink. It's more of a struggle to dress. Clean clothes are a foreign concept now, changing out of clothes that are still wearable – still in one piece and not shredded or crusted with three or five battles worth of blood, torn for bandages or for starting a fire when they were both too weak or in too much danger to even consider using magic – and into something that smells so heavily of detergent that a human could track them by scent.

Mabel helps Dipper into yet another long sleeved shirt when he can't lift both arms high enough to pull it over his head without straining the still healing scars across his shoulders. He forgoes the t-shirt this time; it's not worth the pain or the heat. Sweat already prickles under the sleeves of the thick garment. Inappropriate for the weather it might be, but it's necessary. Far too necessary. He doubts even his wards would be able to stop their parents from questioning the scars and open wounds they both carry.

He wonders if she regrets letting him sear the glyphs into her skin.

He wouldn't have done it. Not if it hadn't been an emergency. Not if he hadn't thought that her life and mental – well, not stability or well-being, but something along those lines – was at stake.

By that point, he had very little hope of their rescue, only of their inevitable death. At one point, death would have been a preferable outcome. Instead, they're linked, a matched set, more than they ever were as just twins. Rune for rune down their spines, each carved by the hand of the other, their souls bound together as close as two souls can be.

They fit. Like puzzle pieces they fill in the gaps where the other leaves off. And maybe the product isn't clear – originally they were different pictures even though they were cast with the same dye – but together they're mostly whole.

Washed and dressed, the twins slink up the stairs to their room. Dipper's room. Without the layers of glyphs scratched and painted and scrawled over every surface, the walls are quiet, less substantial. It's just another reminder that this isn't the Shack. They can't escape into the dark and cool of Ford's lab, curled up with Soos or Wendy or Grunkle Stan or even sometimes Ford himself. There's no fire pit hastily assembled in the basement. Their room, although warded, doesn't reek of old magic and rituals.

This place is foreign, stripped clean of all but the most basic of powers.

They ignore Mabel's door opposite Dipper's, her name bright in cheerful pink over white, and slip instead around the barricade to the mattresses. Futile though it may be, they crowd into blankets, pretend the oppressive weight is a comfort, and attempt to sleep.

Nightmares bring their own brand of torture, made worse in that they are not bound by the physical. Made worse in that the twins know how real nightmares are.

It's nearing dark when they stutter into wakefulness. Mabel heaves herself upright, gulping air as if she were drowning. She might have been. Dipper jolts. His lamp catches on fire.

“– smells like smoke?” they hear from downstairs. Dad. The front door clicks shut and footsteps tap across the tile in the entryway. Dipper smothers the lamp fire with a thought, used to fixing his uncontrolled bursts of magic now. It's easier to cast here than it was there. The magic of this reality is looser, less refined. Emotion, intention, power. That's all it takes. Rituals and runes and glyphs and spells are just ways to refine the process.

“It doesn't look like anything happened to the house,” Mom replies, her voice drifting up the stairs. “Maybe the neighbor's place?”

“No.” Dad's voice is tense. This will be the first true test of their wards. These wards at least, not the ones they've used hundreds of times before. Misdirection concentrated at individuals. Emotional manipulation. It's all very subtle. “ _Dipper! Mabel! Get down here now!”_

“What did – dear lord.”

Despite the distance, it still hurts to have their parents yell at them. Something like shame or guilt burrows under their skin. A conditioned response, probably. Mom and Dad have been their since the beginning, although not the beginning that matters.

Grunkle Stan was never much on discipline – he actively encouraged their rule breaking so long as things were kept presentable for the tourists. Lying and cheating were practically required to survive in the Shack.

Uncle Ford looms. He has rules and regulations and demands the twins follow them, but those are rules of life, of survival, and are flexible depending on the situation.

Wendy has rules also – _don't run over any pedestrians –_ but laughed off things like vandalism. She'd be a little mad at them, they know, if she had any idea what they were doing. She has all these ideals about personal freedom that seem to apply to everyone, not just her close friends.

Soos, well, Soos is happy when they're safe. He's spent too much time idolizing Grunkle Stan to care overly much about people he isn't emotionally attached to.

“ _Dipper! Mabel!”_

The twins have no room to care about anyone but each other here. Not when Dipper panics if he doesn't know where Mabel is all the time. Not when Mabel is certain Dipper is her only true connection to reality.

Not when physical distance pulls at the bindings on their souls.

No one here will understand. Soos and Wendy and Ford and Stan barely understood, and they knew more than anyone here ever will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised Jan 3


	3. Cacophonous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> involving or producing a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds

2 September 2012 – Sunday

They trip downstairs, Dipper's hand on Mabel's arm while his other brushes the wards, powering them with their combined energies. Mabel tries not to look at anything except his fingers wrapped a full circle around her wrist, overlapping at the tips. She concentrates on the difference of their skin – hers calloused, his smooth, both too pale and thin, veins dark and blue. She tries not to look at her sweater except where it bunches around his hand. It's solid there. Fabric, not static.

She tries not to look at the walls, a wavering ribbon of creams and pinks, or the shifting sand masquerading as the floor. In theory, in her faded memories, there's carpeting upstairs and hardwood downstairs, but nothing here looks real. It doesn't even have the decency to be consistent in its unreality, flickering from one nauseating illusion to the next. Not here, where what magic remains is untrained, unharnessed.

She especially doesn't look at the spitting miasma of purple and green lurking at the kitchen door, but she walks through it, eyes squeezed shut, when Dipper tugs at her. It doesn't stop the sound. It never stops the sound, but neither does covering her ears because it's all an illusion. Not real.

Wendy mentioned once the word _hallucination_ and Dipper's quiet rage cut the power to three quarters of Gravity Falls.

Their parents are yelling. They're very quiet about it, mouths sewn shut and faces set in mild annoyance. She can see it, though. The wards curl around them at the wrists, ankles, and neck, chaining them down, but she can hear them yelling anyway. The walls buckle under the strain, leaking, oozing. Green and pale and murky, it bleeds, building up and dripping _plunk, plunk, plunk,_ thick and viscous to the floor. Electricity splinters across the windows, sparking scarlet.

“Would either of you care to explain why the backyard is on fire?” Miffed. She can barely hear the words under the shrieking, screaming, shouting outrage, worry, fear that the wards keep shackled. Brighter and brighter and darker and darker they pulse.

Their wax-figure parents melt under the light of it. The weight of it.

Dipper responds, “The backyard isn't on fire. It burned out hours ago,” and she can hear him just fine. Like his hand on her wrist, a warm, solid presence, his voice is real, remains real, and cuts though that which is unreal with ease. He's careful not to pull more power from her despite the contact. Their parents aren't threats. Not even as the Dad-figure buffets at them, face contorted into something pink-gray and squished, and the Mom-figure sprouts limbs like a tree, arms and fingers pointing every which way.

Mabel turns from the leaf litter billowing against Dipper's actuality, each petal razor blades where they bite into her skin, and burrows against her brother's shoulder. His free hand is trapped behind his back, magic frothing pale blue from inside his fist. It smells like peppermint. Soothing. She's not sure if he does it on purpose, he probably doesn't, but his pure magic is almost always peppermint. And it's not just her. Unlike most everything else she experiences now, the others have commented on the scent too. Soos, actually. In a moment of calm three nights after they came home, the entire family eating pancakes for dinner in Ford's lab, Soos mentioned it.

Until then they'd been tentative in talking about how much the twins had charged but this, the mention of peppermint magic, was simple and easily confirmed by the others. Dipper hadn't noticed before then. Mabel hadn't felt the need to actually tell him when they were elsewhere. She figured he knew seeing as none of the various trackers set upon them found then because of peppermint magic. Mabel had checked. Each tracker she took down was thoroughly interrogated before she gave them to her brother.

He knows now, though, so she doesn't know why he hasn't suppressed the scent. He could. It's his magic.

"Do not yell at Mabel _ever_ again," Dipper snarls, lips pulled back from teeth, eyes edging blue with power. They yelled at her? She thought the wards would keep them too passive for that. She'd been so concentrated on Dipper's silence that the screaming couldn't reach her, let alone physical sound. The illusions, sometimes, and not nearly often enough in her opinion, can't touch her through the defense of Dipper's reality.

He continues speaking, voice rumbling over her skin. "We needed to be rid of some things and fire was the safest way to accomplish that. It was a very controlled burn. Nothing as dangerous as the squirrels at home.”

Home. He said it aloud. Mabel turns wide eyes on her brother. They've been avoiding calling Gravity Falls home out loud. It is dangerous to do so. If other people, those unaware especially, learn just how attached the twins are to their great uncle's home, there might be inquiries. Questions. The twins can't afford questions.

Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan can't afford questions.

Dipper winces.

She risks a glance; their parents are melting, oozing and sticking all over the floor. The Mom-figure waves desperate limbs. The Dad-figure is sort of puce, sputtering and boiling as he comes undone. Nausea knocks her mind approximately three feet to the left. The world skews into a high-pitched whining, and black and white blocks, tilting whenever she blinks. She blinks? She thinks she does. She can't tell. But her stomach makes its home in her throat and her knees are jello and her spine attempts to rip its way out of her spleen and –

Everything pauses.

They're up in their room.

Dipper is solid and real, a comforting warms, an island of color that eases back the contrast. He's holding her hands, speaking gentle nonsense words as his voice slowly filters through the static. He's not glowing anymore, but the peppermint scent lingers. His sphere of influence expands to encompass the entire room until only the ward-lines are bright. Possibly real. Possibly not. It doesn't matter.

“I want to go home,” she whispers and folds into his hug. He nods against her hair.

The alarm clock blinks 9:24 PM. How long has she been out of it? Dipper's hands are shaking, his eye brimming with guilt. It's an expression, though, and not slushy ocean waves and hail – that's Grunkle Stan. Anger and guilt and grief. She knows what that looks like. Learned it quickly enough, learned how it turned the floors and the Shack slick with ice. Grunkle Stan learned too. His relief tastes like sunshine and spring water.

Things make to much more sense at the Shack. The illusions are – not consistent. They share traits though. Grunkle Stan is water, always water. Wendy usually relates to insects: her anger stings and her pain swarms like gnats or ants. Soos is stone but sounds of slot machines. Or maybe the destruction of a construction site.

Ford is the only one who remains clear, for the most part. The marble wings weighing down his shoulders are the only indication of her perception turning sideways.

“We're grounded,” Dipper says, edging across the mental gap between them. Grounded for a week, and even after that they're supposed to be home by four with homework finished by six, and in bed by nine for the rest of the month. No friends or phones or tv during that time, either. No dinner tonight.

“The wards worked,” she confirms.

It's obvious, really. They're not in the car, or in a _hospital_. She knows full well what it looks like when she can't escape the illusions. She's seen it in Dipper's head, watched it on the security cameras at the Shack. Color abandons her skin. Her muscles lock. She'll sway, eyes unfocused and darting around. Sometimes, if it's bad enough, she'll attack.

It wasn't bad enough this time. She just went blank.

Grateful, she sinks into the link until they are them, no longer separate. Shared space and shared thoughts, their breathing synced. They fall, not asleep, but into the wards and monitor them for the remainder of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised Jan 5


	4. Part 1 - Outsider: School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which does not belong or is not accepted
> 
> a social experiment disguised as a learning environment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Original character pov

3 September 2012 – Monday

Piedmont is a relatively small city located in the Oakland Hills, overlooking San Francisco Bay. It's located within easy driving distance of both Oakland and San Francisco cities, but within city limits there are five city parks and numerous landscaped areas which offer wooded paths, tennis courts, playgrounds and picnic facilities.Most of the 11,000 residents live in high-quality single family homes on quiet tree-lined streets, as was intended when the city was planned.

All in all, it's an average upper-middle class California suburb.

Sarah Capter is a fairly standard example of the eighth grade female population: white, of middling height, with hair that is neither brown nor blonde, and brown eyes. Her mother works to support her and her two younger brothers while their father swans along from parts unknown to parts even more unknown. While that makes her a bit left of completely average, her family situation isn't exactly uncommon. And besides, her mother earns enough to put them solidly in the middle class. The three Capter children have never truly wanted for anything in their lives and have never been bullied because they can't keep up with the trends.

Sarah's been bullied for other things before. The reasons she's managed to deduce from nasty notes and hastily thrown insults include, but are not limited to: shaving her head, tripping over a fire hydrant because she couldn't get her nose out of a book, and being friends with Mabel Pines.

The last throws people off.

Mabel, in and of herself, tends to throw people off anyway, but her friends are always given strange looks and pitying glances.

Sarah has been Mabel's best friends since they were five when they bonded over glitter paint – Sarah remembers something about going home early that day because the glitter paint wasn't actually supposed to be body paint? – and annoying little brothers. Of course, Sarah only had one baby brother at that point, and Mabel's little brother is only five minutes littler, but that didn't matter much. They stuck together from that point on – only partially because they literally glued their arms together a couple of time.

From hand-made sweaters to coming to school with half a thing of superglue stuck to her jeans and sequins adhered to her face the result of falling asleep crafting, Mabel only grew more eccentric. Sarah easily took up the role as her voice of reason – _no, Mabel, don't do the thing_ – that they both promptly ignored. That became the pattern of many a misadventure right up through sixth grade.

Middle school.

Sixth grade brought two new friends – Yesenia Dias and Brianna Fairview – and the scary new reality of separate class periods. Seventh grade was worse. Not only did they not share classes all the time, but Mabel and Brianna had a different lunch hour. That put a severe dent in anything even remotely fun the four friends could do.

Now, of course, they're _teenagers_ and in eighth grade. They're back at the top of the social food chain, or as much as they can be being those weird kids who hang out with the Pines girl. They're old hats at the bell schedule and class periods and the teachers. Eighth grade puts them all back in the same lunch period, too. That doesn't hurt.

In sticking with tradition, the four agreed to meet up where Mabel and Sarah met Brianna and Yesenia way back at the beginning sixth grade. Every morning for the past two years, the girls gathered in the amphitheater fifteen minutes before first bell. Yesenia always arrives first, but that's because she lives a street away and just walks to school every morning. Mabel, though, is usually only moments behind her, sprinting across the pavilion, her backpack and or clothing jangling with baubles.

Today is the first day she's been late. Ever. She doesn't even take sick days.

Brianna slumps back on the cement bench, ignoring the almost cold as it seeps into her back. It's a little weird being out early enough that she can wear a sweater without dying. There's even still fog lingering about, leaving a slight bite of salt to the air. “Have _either_ of you seen her?” she asks for probably the fifth time. Again, the responses are negative.

“I heard that she went on vacation this summer,” Yesenia offers. “Something about visiting some relative in some nowhere town in Oregon.”

That's all any of them have heard. For three solid months. Mabel left almost before school ended.

Sarah slouches over a support beam, phone dangling from her fingers as she checks the time. Not even five minutes until the bell rings and there are far too many stairs between her and her core classroom. She glares at the gum-stained ground. She really hates being late.

“I guess,” Sarah begins and the other two focus on her. Somehow, she's always the one to make the decision about Mabel. “I guess that if none of us have her in our first three classes, we could meet up at the library during break and see if her brother's here.”

“You're expecting _Marvel_ to know where Mabel is?” Yesenia scoffs. That is, Sarah supposes as they grab their bags, the proper amount of incredulity for the issue. Mabel has her awesome friends and Marvel has his nerd friends and neither group nor siblings really keep track of each other. The only reason Sarah knows where the nerd-group hangs out is because Mabel's got everyone kicked out of the library last year for starting a debate that escalated into a shouting match, and Marvel complained – asked politely, really, but what's the difference? – about them starting riots where he likes hanging out.

They've avoided the library during breaks since then. Partially because Mabel's polite, unlike Sarah, and doesn't like needlessly antagonizing her brother. Partially because the librarian holds a grudge.

“Not really, but if he's not there maybe they're just not back from their trip yet,” Sarah defends. It's a good defense. Reasonable, even. Mabel didn't forget about them over the summer and no one has to know that she has an itty bitty, teeny tiny crush on Marvel Pines. It's nothing really and definitely hasn't been festering since sixth grade when they shared five classes out of seven. He's her best friend's brother – _twin brother –_ and she's watched enough tv to know that never ends well.

The girls split to head to their respective classes. Sarah grumbles up yet another set of stairs to the one class she doesn't share with either of the other two this year and nearly fails to recognize the Pines twins already within the room.

Truly, she only realizes it's them because she knows almost everyone at this school by sight if not name. The lack of immediate recognition makes her focus on them just a little harder than she does the other kids milling about the room. Marvel's first because he's sitting on a desk facing the door. His blue and white hat obscures shaggy brown curls, but does nothing to hide the _pale_ and _thin_ and _sleep-deprived_ lurking about his face. A red jacket hangs loose off curled shoulders.

There's a mop of longer brown curl tucked between his leg and the desk. Mabel, Sarah decides and pushes away the flare of irrational jealousy. Mabel is the only girl willing to get that close to Marvel. Or maybe she's the only girl Marvel's willing to let that close. He's not very touch-y. But Mabel's bright sweaters have been replaced with something baggy and navy, and she's wearing pants for the first time since she declared them the source of all evil back in second grade.

And she's quiet. Actually, the corner of the room the twins are occupying – they're only really taking up one desk, Mabel in the chair and Marvel sitting on the table, all of their things taking up the space underneath, but there's at least one other desk between the two and any of the other kids in the room – is unusually quiet. Quiet is not a word Sarah associates with Marvel, let alone Mabel.

It's wrong.

Marvel leans over for a different angel and presses the sharpie against the back of Mabel's neck. Easing closer, Sarah can see a little of what he's drawing. It's math, maybe. There are a lot of unnecessary squiggled and strange letter, but it looks alarmingly like math, and Marvel is drawing it on the back of Mabel's neck.

Mabel is allowing her brother to draw math on the back of her neck in sharpie. There is something wrong with the world.

Sarah sets her backpack down on one of the empty desks and freezes, pinned by Marvel's eyes. They're...not right, like there's something dangerous hovering behind the glassy, doll-like gaze.

“Bro Bro?” Mabel whispers, starting to lean up. Marvel presses his left hand against the back of her head, easing her back down. His right curls a little, hiding the design as he looks down and continues to draw. Sarah finds herself able to breathe again. She doesn't remember stopping.

“Almost done,” he mutters. He look up again, not quite glaring, every couple of seconds to observe the room. Sarah's beyond glad it doesn't settle on her with quite the same intensity. Very deliberately, Marvel adds, “Sarah's in this class.”

It's not an invitation, but Sarah, in true Mabel fashion, decides to take it as one anyway. “Hi, Mabel!” she chirps. “Marvel. How was your summer?”

“Done,” Marvel says and caps the pen. Mabel tucks her hair into place, pulling the floppy collar of her sweater up until she's halfway to sweater town. Only then do the twins turn to her. There's something wrong about how they're moving. Breathing. Marvel glares at anyone who comes within six feet of them, which mostly means that he's glowering at Sarah, but she can still breathe so that's fine. Well, not really. Mabel, although she's sitting up now, leans fully against her brother's knees. Her hand wraps around his wrist, revealing a tight black band.

It's beyond weird seeing the twins so...physical isn't a word she wants to use, but touch-y doesn't inspire the same feeling of _not right_ the siblings are exuding.

“Summer was,” Marvel begins, sharing a glance with his sister.

“Eventful,” Mabel finished. Her knuckles turn white around Marvel's wrist. He doesn't appear bothered.

“We went to visit our Grunkle Stan.”

Sarah frowns. “Grunkle?”

“Great uncle,” Mabel clarifies." Um, well, we – I mean, I had a couple boyfriends. Jeff, or, well, actually, he was pretending to be this guy called Norman.”

Marvel scoffs. "That ended well.” Mabel grins, something sneaky lingering behind the flash of teeth.

"Yeah. Then there was Gideon. He tried to kill Dipper a couple times.”

“It like he never learns,” the boy sneers. Sarah twitches back from the expression, having never seen anything like it on their twin, but the movement attracts their attention and she's momentarily pinned by two frosty glares. Then Mabel blinks and slouches across Marvel's lap. Sarah isn't sure if she's creeped out that they relax the closer they are or if she should just be thankful they're no longer looking at her like that. “I think Mermando was the best boyfriend you had. You two did get me fired, though.”

“Yeah, but I did the dolphin thing.” The twins share a smile. “We didn't even get arrested that time for vandalism, destruction of public property and theft.”

“ _Arrested?”_ Sarah shrieks in time with the second and the twins jerk away from her, snarling as everyone else moves to find their seats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised January 7


	5. Outsider Part 2: Teacher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> those who liked school so much that they couldn't stand to leave

7 September 2012 – Friday

James van Kleek has been a teacher for nearly twenty years. He started with college, teaching English to a wide variety of students. It took four years of coaxing and cajoling adults through the process of writing professional-sounding research essays before he decided he'd be better off teaching the source of his problem: teenagers. He spent the year his youngest child was born splitting his time between teaching, updating his credentials, and home.

He liked high school. He got to spend four years with some of those kids, gradually increasing his standards until their writing was acceptable. Some of his friends still teaching at various college congratulated him on making certain at least some of their students wouldn't need their hands held during every step of a paper. After fourteen years of that, however, he decided he needed a change.

It had everything to do with his youngest entering high school. With the first two children, he either dealt with having them in his classes or argued for several hours with admin whenever there was a schedule change. Neither option was preferable. What with the pending divorce and his youngest's reaction – Dad is to blame for everything, obviously, because apparently their keeping her string of affairs secret despite it being the reason he asked for a divorce anyway – Mr. van Kleek would rather just solve the issue by not being there altogether.

He is definitely solving his problems and not avoiding them.

Aside from that, Mr. van Kleek is a professional. He will not allow his personal problems to interfere with his ability to work with these kids. That's why he's in the records room at six in the evening on a Friday instead of going home to relax and watch tv. Dinner. Dinner sounds really good right about now, but he needs to solve this. The Pines twins.

Mr. van Kleek has worked with hundreds of students over the years – he's probably pushing thousands – but those two. He isn't sure what it is about them – they touch too much, but not in a way that could be seen as inappropriate; they don't interact with the other kids unless forced to; they don't talk; they flinch or growl at sudden movements and loud noises – that bothers him.

He didn't even notice them enter the classroom that first day. He hasn't noticed them actually enter to leave any day since, but he knows where they sit now and keeps and eye on the space so that he can keep track of their arrival. He even ended up changing the seating chart to place Dipper – Marvel, but the boy insisted – in the back next to his sister so that they'd stop twitching.

There has to be something in their records about this behavior. A medical reason someone neglected to tell him about. Notes from other teachers. _Something._

“James?” Lori Medina pokes her head in with a confused smile. She's one of the science teachers. Older than him by about ten years, she's been working at this school for almost twice at long as anyone else. Mr. van Kleek returns her smile with a strained one of his own. “What are you doing in here?”

“Mabel and Marvel Pines, probably,” a new voice calls from the office proper. “Michael Li,” the man introduces with a wave once Mr. van Kleek can see him. “I don't think we've met yet. I teach math.”

“Hazards of a late transfer,” Mr. van Kleek says. “You know about Mabel and Dipper?”

“I had them in my class last year. Separately,” Mr. Li explains. He gestures at the files Mr. van Kleek is holding. “This behavior is so out of character I didn't even recognize them at first. Normally, if the parents call about something traumatic--”

“Traumatic?” Ms. Medina exclaims.

Mr. Li grimaces. “I suspect it has to be, the way they're acting. But if a student suddenly needs special provisions or treatment, either there'd be a staff meeting or that student's teachers would get an email.”

“I thought as much.” Mr. van Kleek heaves a sigh. “Regulations can't differ that much between high school and middle school.

Ms. Medina takes one of the folders from Mr. van Kleek, asking, “What were they like? I've never had them before,” as she flips through the various papers.

"Well," Mr. Li hedges. He takes the other file – Mabel's file – from Mr. van Klee and shuffles through it. "Mabel's loud," he begins. "She speaks loud and dresses loud and most of her opinions are loud too. It's been recommended by several teachers over the years that her parents should have her diagnosed with ADHD, or something similar, but nothing has ever come of that as far as I know." He slides several papers out of the folder, spreading them out on the table they're all loitering near. Each, dating back to first grade, says roughly the same thing: _Mabel has problems sitting still/paying attention in class/keeping on task/with distractions. I suggest seeking medical help for a possible ADD/ADHD diagnosis._ "And, well, there was the library incident last year."

As happens nearly every time a staff member mentions that particular debacle, the head librarian pops up put of nowhere and says, "Incident? That wasn't an incident! That was mayhem! That girl started a riot over the flavor of sprinkles – _sprinkles_ – that resulted in three knocked over bookshelves, half a dozen ruined books, two black eyes, and eighteen detentions. And the school board says that I still have to allow her in my library!" The three teachers watch wide-eyed as the head librarian shuffles out of the office, still ranting.

“Troublemaker?” Mr. van Kleek clarifies.

“Most of her life, from what I can tell.” Mr. Li places another note down, this one from sixth grade. _Mabel doesn't know when to stop talking. She's pushy and opinionated. With teachers, she knows exactly which buttons she can push before she ends up in trouble. With students, however, she tends to push buttons at lead to fights, sometimes physical, but no disciplinary action has been taken as she's appears to – I hate to say target, but it appears that she targets the bullies. She has never thrown the first punch, either._

Mr. van Kleek thinks back over his week of limited interaction with Mabel Pines and is hard-pressed to think of the girl described in the file as the one he's met.

“I've heard of a couple of those fights,” Ms. Medina says. She places pages from Marvel's file next to the corresponding ones already on the table. It paints the picture of a rather reserved boy who would rather be reading than interacting with other kids, especially if those other kids included his sister. In fact, the few teachers they shared during elementary school pointed out an unusual trend that nearly contradicts how they're acting now.

 _I'm worried about Mabel and Marvel,_ wrote their first grade teacher. _Barring a few fights, most children their age are willing to play with anyone. The more familiar a child is with a potential playmate, the more willing they are to play. I've taught twins before, but Mabel and Marvel almost seem to avoid each other on the playground. They always choose not to sit next to each other. I've spoken to their parents about this, but it seems that they don't play together at home either._

Their fourth grade teacher said much the same thing. _Mabel and Marvel Pines were both in my class this year, and while they have no problems working with other students, no matter who I pair them with, I have a lot of trouble getting them to work together. It's not that they're fighting, but rather they're so indifferent towards each other that they go out of their way to avoid the other. I find this concerning._

“This,” Mr. van Kleek says, tapping the relevant notes, “is no what I've observed.” Ms. Medina frowns at him, but Mr. Li nods in agreement. “They're clingy to the point of co-dependence. They avoid interacting with the other kids, even friends, from what I've gathered. Mabel's quiet. Marvel's, well, I'm not sure how to describe him, but reserved isn't it.”

“They apparently do better together than apart,” Mr. Li sighs. “I have Mabel in fifth and Marvel in sixth, and I have never seen to twitchier kids. They won't talk. They barely do the work. When the bell rings they practically launch themselves out of the room -”

“You've seen them leave the room? I've never been able to catch them.”

The three teachers gaze down at the files, thoughts on two very different children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised Jan 12


	6. Outsider Part 3: Parents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an animal or plant from which younger ones are derived

20 September 2012 – Thursday

_Call Uncle Stan._

Mr. Pines stares at the phone – stares at the note. A note he wrote, apparently, because it's in his handwriting, but he doesn't remember even thinking those words, let along writing them down, and isn't that just the tip of the iceberg? This past month has been one miserable waking nightmare. And sometimes it doesn't even stop when he does manage to fall asleep. He'll wake up in the middle of the night to find himself running up the stairs, heart beating panic into his veins and a confused wife trailing after him. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth and a ringing in his ears reminiscent of screaming children. But there's nothing going on. The night is quiet bar his wife's gentle coaxing.

“It's just a bad dream, sweetheart,” she says. “Come back to bed. You've been under a lot of stress lately.”

He has. He's been under a great deal of stress. He's a lawyer. He's a good lawyer – calm, collected – but that does very little when one of his clients is being sued for fraud. Is guilty of fraud, really, and no matter how much Mr. Pines would love to nail him to a wall, if he wants to keep the contract he'll have to weasel the man out of as much trouble as he can. That coupled with whatever is happening that causes the terrible, irrational anger to swell up and staying calm is now a trial. Every little thing that doesn't wrong is far too likely to set off what is turning out to be hair-trigger temper. And his temper isn't what he remembers either. It's no longer a simmer deep in his gut, but rather a storm, lightening and rage that encourages him to yell and swear and hit things.

He's been trying his best to stay away from the twins. He doesn't want to fly off the handle around them and do something he'd regret for the rest of his – thereafter – relatively short life.

And now there's this note.

He hasn't seen Uncle Stan since the twins were born. He hadn't seen the man much before that either, maybe just a couple of times growing up. Stan always has been a bit of a recluse. And then the old man's estranged twin, Stanley, died in a horrible car accident, and he stopped going by Stanford or Ford, and started going by Stan. The name change always struck Mr. Pines as a little depressing, but he wasn't going to judge. He never met Stanley. Maybe it was appropriate.

Mr. Pines closes his eyes, refusing further distraction as he picks up the phone and dials Stan's number. It's been three weeks since the twins came home and three weeks since he started having memory and mood problems. There's something wrong.

He wouldn't exactly put it past Stan to teach the kids some trick or other that would mess with his mind. It seems a very Stan thing to do. Hypnosis?

The phone rings three times before beeping over to an answering machine. “ _Welcome to the Mystery Shack,”_ the voice drones. _“If you are a customer, please press one. If you are with the FBI, please press two. If you are with Homeland Security, please press three. If you are with_ _the CIA, please press four. If your are with the NSA, please press five. If you are with the IRS, please press six.”_

Mr. Pines, not being associated with a government agency, presses one and is transferred to a bored-sounding teenage girl. She picks up with a, “Mystery Shack, this is Wendy. Is there anything you'd like to order today? Shipping is ten percent more are orders less than fifty dollars.”

“I need to speak with Stan.”

“We know nothing about pugs or the Mexican border, and we aren't harboring any fugitives.”

“That's – what?” After more than twenty years of this ridiculous behavior, Mr. Pines should be used to it. He's not. “Never mind. I need to speak to Stan.”

“Which Stan?”

“The living one?”

“Which one?”

There's more than one living Stan at the Shack? “Stanford Pines.”

There's a pause. “I'll need your full name, social security number, address, yearly salary, age, height, weight, and license number.”

Mr. Pines considers himself a fairly reasonable man. He doesn't yell at customer services workers. He doesn't make his clients cry with nonsense legal jargon. He doesn't kick stray puppies or piss on the homeless. He's a reasonable man.

He is a reasonable man who has had a shitty month for no reason and has recently acquired a hair-trigger temper. Now he is a reasonable man who is getting yanked around by some backwoods teenage girl under the employ of his uncle. An uncle, mind, that the girl appears to think there are two of?

“I want,” he grounds out, “to speak to the man I entrusted with my children.”

Because now, for no explainable reason, he's pissed at Stan. He's pissed at Stan like Stan hurt his kids. His children. His Mabel and his Dipper and there's nothing wrong with them and that just pisses him off more because even thinking of them sends his heart into panic while nervous butterflies tango with nausea in his stomach.

He barely registers the brief silence on the other line, his ears pounding too loud to hear much of anything. Then the girl speaks again. “You're Mabel and Dipper's dad. Are they – yeah. Just a sec. I'll go get Stan.” A thunk indicates the receiver being set down, followed by a muffled by still audible series of footsteps away from what Mr. Pines is the counter. “Soos, where's Stan?”

“Basement, dude. S'where he always is,” comes the reply from 'Soos'. An employee, Mr. Pines believes. He thinks the kids mentioned something about a Soos during their earlier calls. He may have thought that this Soos character was closer to their age – they may have said something about Stan hiring him at twelve – but the voice filtering through the phone sounds at least late teens.

He's not sure how he feels about 'Soos' – and what kind of name is Soos anyway? – handing around his kids. Not that he has room to talk. He's the one who sent the kids to stay with their con artist, former mad scientist, great uncle for the summer.

“Can you get go get him? Uh, Mabel and Dipper's dad is on the phone.”

“Dude, are they okay?”

“I – I don't know. Just, please? I gotta man the front –”

“No problem, dude.”

The girl doesn't pick up the phone again. Mr. Pines is left quietly seething, forced to listen to several ridiculous overpriced transactions for equally ridiculous wares. Seven human eyes? A spontaneously bleeding fish? Gnome beard hair?

Then the phone clicks and Stan says, “I was expecting your call three weeks ago,” before Mr. Pines can even can even open his mouth. “How're the kids?”

Caught off guard, Mr. Pines replies, “Fine. They're fine.”

“Fine?” Stan's skepticism is a physical thing. “They weren't fine when they left here. On a bus, I might add. But I suppose since you didn't call me three weeks ago, that mean they didn't decide to get off the bus.”

“What –”

“No, you are going to shut up and listen to me for once, young man,” his uncle snarls. “Those kids went through something the last month they were here. Only, they weren't here and we're fairly certain it wasn't a month, and the only reason I'm telling you any of this is because I'm fairly certain, definitely certain, that they kids did something and you probably won't remember any of this conversation. Those kids are hurting, dammit. They're hurting so much that they don't even know how to ask for help. And you, you little idiot, took them away from me. I could've helped them.

“You put them back in school, didn't you? Surrounded by hundreds of kids and complex social situations – they aren't up for that, dumbass! And –”

Mr. Pines stares at the phone resting quietly in its cradle, idly tossing a crumpled bit of paper in the trash. He wonders, briefly, why he feels so drained before remembering his impending court appearance. He sighs.

Mabel and Dipper are watching him from the doorway when he turns around. He grants them an exhausted smile and retreats to his office. His temper's been too perilous to stay around the kids much. He doesn't want to hurt them accidentally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised Feb 4


	7. Summer Part 1: Reconcile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a ceasefire in which new battle lines are drawn

3 August 2012 – Friday

 _ _"Grunkle Stan,"__ Mabel said, __"I trust you."__

God, he wishes she listened to her brother. Why does she never listen to her brother? Why did he have to ask her to go along with his stupid, stupid plan? Couldn't he have just left well enough alone? Thirty years, he been trying to get that damned machine to work. Thirty years. Forty since he's had a reasonable conversation with his brother. He's an old man, and those kids sauntered into his life and took over. He owes them his life.

No.

He owes them more than that. He owes them _everything._

 _ _"Finally,"__ he breathed, wide-eyed and grinning at his brother. __"After all these long years of waiting, you're actually here!"__ And Ford punched him in the face, which, ow, but not entirely unexpected. But still, __"What the heck was that for?”__

 _ _"You restarted the portal! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Didn't you read my warnings?"__ Ford shouted. Of course he did. Stan spent the majority of his life trying to get him back, spent thirty years working day and night trying to get back a man he had no reason to believe was even alive. But no. Stan didn't read the warnings.

 _ _"Warnings, shmarnings,"__ he growled. __"How about a 'thank you' you ungrateful ass?"__

__"A thank you after what you did thirty years ago?"_ _

Of course it was his fault. It always was. The perpetual motion machine broke even after he made certain it was still moving, still working, broke when he wasn't even there – but it's Stan's fault Ford didn't get into his fancy college. And of course it's Stan's fault that Ford fell through the portal. They were fighting, sure, and it could have just as easily been Stan that fell through when pushed, but since it was Ford and everything is Stan's fault, just go ahead and blame Stan. Stan the Scapegoat. That's him.

There's a big difference, Stan decided, between blaming yourself and having the object of your guilt blame you.

He lunged, too slow, and Ford caught his arm, yanking it behind him without much trouble. Stan had always been best at fighting, though, and turns the hold into a grapple, both brothers struggling against the other.

 _ _"Uh, Mr. Pines?"__ Soos interrupted, as usual completely missing the situational cues that said don't interrupt. The brothers looked up. __"Where are the kids?"__

Stan honestly can't remember the next several minutes. Later, in one of the quiet moments waiting for the coffee to kick in, Ford told him what happened. Stan broke from the fight, leapt to his feet, and spun in a circle. Frantic. Horrified. He shouted for the kids, repeating their names over and over, demanding they stop fooling around and get out here now. Please.

But they didn't. Couldn't. Because Mabel, dear sweet Mabel, was less than three feet from the open portal when she let go of the switch. And Dipper jumped for her, pushing off from the wall. Both of them were too close and unattached to anything. And Stan, he'd been too caught up in Ford to notice. He'd always been too caught up in Ford to notice.

Mabel should have listened to her brother.

It was a mess.

Ford was confused, angry and hurt, but for once, Stan had no desire to fix their relationship. The US government was upstairs, searching for downstairs. The kids were gone.

The kids are gone. It's been two damned weeks and the kids are still gone.

Soos touches his arm, kind eyes backed by a small smile and a cup of too-strong coffee. Ford slumps over a chair as he breathes in the steam from his own cup. Papers lay scattered around the room. Calculations decorate the walls – written, scratched out, written over.

It's been two weeks.

The thing with the portal, Ford explained, is that it opens, briefly, in all dimensions simultaneously before it focuses on the one described by the calculations. They have no way of knowing where or when the kids ended up. If they went through just before Ford exited the portal, it was probable that they were where Ford was. But the brothers checked that first. As soon as the government left and they refueled the machine, they checked where Ford was and the twins weren't there. Now it's a guessing game. Open the portal and hope. Each time, just maybe, there's a chance of landing on the correct dimension. Alternatively, the kids could fall through in the millisecond the portal is open everywhere.

"Tell me about them?" Ford asks out of the blue. Stan glances over from where he's slumped against the wall. They haven't talked much. Their only conversations so far have been about the machine. Well, after Stan punched Ford in the face and threatened to tear the boundaries between universes asunder if he didn't get off his ass and help. This is the first time Ford's expressed any interest in the twins except for finding them. "The kids. What are they like?"

And isn't that the question. Stan can't say __they're like us__ because, really, they're not. "Well, they're twins and twelve, but I don't think I've ever seen siblings get along so well..." Not counting, of course, how he and Ford used to be as children. "Their parents sent them up here at the end of May for, I dunno, bonding or something. Go spend time with Great Uncle Stan before he dies of old age or malaria or is violently murdered by cursed wax sculptures."

" _ _What?"__

Oh, Stan has missed that yelp. He hasn't heard it since they were ten and he accused Ford of having a crush on Mindy Alerish. He starts laughing, exhaustion making it hard to stop, and slides to the floor. Coffee sloshes over the rim of the cup, burning his hand. "I'll tell you the full story sometime, but, yeah, Mabel is an artistic genius. She took a bunch of melted wax and turned it into an exact replica of me in about a day. She knits most of her own clothes. Her counterfeit bills are nearly perfect."

Ford gives him this look. It's mostly incredulous with a little bit of horrified awe thrown in for added flair. Almost as good as the yelp. "You had the kids __forging money__?"

"Eh, just a little. We only got arrested for it the one time."

"Ah, yes, you mentioned last...last time we saw each other that you'd been to jail in three countries. What is in this stuff?" Ford demands, breaking eye contact to gaze down into his coffee. It's such an obvious change of topic and Stan is thankful for it. That had been edging in on territory Stan is not comfortable dealing with yet. "I don't think I've slept in four days."

And Ford is, apparently, incapable of not making interesting points. Stan himself might have slept sometime last week and despite the bone-deep weariness clawing at his mind, he has zero inclination to sleep now, either. That's not even just his desperation to get the twins back speaking. His mind is fuzzy, yes, but it feels rather like he jacked it into a power station or something.

He sniffs suspiciously at the dark liquid then holds it up to the light, dim though it may be. Galaxy patterns glitter and twirl lazily through what is supposed to be bitter caffeine. Considering the lack of half-melted plastic toys – he thinks, he hasn't choked on any yet – he is left with only one option. "Soos has been brewing the coffee with Mabel Juice," Stan declares and takes a huge gulp. It tastes just like extra strong black coffee. Or, at least, it tastes like the extra strong black coffee that he's been drinking all summer.

No wonder he's cut back on his coffee consumption.

"Mabel Juice?"

"I have no idea what she puts in the stuff, but there's a barrel or two in the back fermenting. Whatever it is, though, it has more caffeine than about four cups of coffee and probably has a similar chemical composition to speed. Also, plastic toys."

Ford, having been in the middle of a long sip, stops and gives the cup a suspicious look. Carefully, he places it on the table and inches away. "Anyway, what about the other one. Dipper. Please tell me that's not his real name."

"Ha!" Again the hysteria of exhaustion extends his laughter too long. "No, Dipper's actually Marvel. Mabel and Marvel Pines. Only family really called him Dipper. But when they got to town, Mabel introduced him to everyone as Dipper and they turned it into a game once people started trying to guess his real name..."

Stan launches into his favorite stories about the kids and Ford smiles and laughs and for once, they don't fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised Feb 4


	8. Runaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which has broken away from control or is easily won

1 November 2012 – Monday

Mom is planted firmly in the spell Dipper wove, a fly wrapped snugly in a spider's web. She, unlike Dad, doesn't twitch away from the suggestions whispering lies into her ears. Her unconscious mind doesn't hear their nightmares underneath the cloak of magic. She doesn't hear their screams or see the purple-blue bruises under their eyes – some from lack of sleep, others real when a flailing limb catches the other unaware. She doesn't think anything strange of the phone calls from teachers. She doesn't notice anything odd about serving dinner and returning after with two full plates.

She is caught. Trapped.

Dad, well, Dad isn't. He struggles, pulls against the bindings with everything he has, with everything he is. He notices. He hears them. But then the magic surges, panic lending enough strength to the wards to push those thoughts from his mind. He's buckling, but not in the way the twins want. Instead of giving in, he's straining, and they're fairly certain it's killing him.

There has been a lot of yelling lately.

When they sleep – seldom, but it happens – their nightmares set them screaming, clinging and curling together for comfort. That's on a good night. They'll hear their father's footsteps pounding up the stairs, pause, and then a gentle pair of confused voices. It's almost a comfort. They almost want to open the door, to run out and hug their parents and beg for the solace of someone larger than they are chasing the monsters away. Only, they can't. They aren't little kids anymore, no matter what it feels like, and, aside from the nightmares, they are the biggest of monsters in town. Likely, they're the biggest monsters in their middling half of California.

The bad nights don't let them wake up. On bad nights they're trapped, just like their mother is, only this trap isn't a lie of peace. It's horror and war and blood and torture and looming shadows and laughter. Laughter.

Then, when they wake, it's five days of school, and food, and watching Dad fall apart at the seams. It's listening to his arguments with Mom because he's _fine, dammit_ _and_ _doesn't need a doctor._ It's worried teachers and friends they don't remember and classes they have no need for. English has been replaced with runic alphabets and archaic languages. Math and science is ward design and spell crafting. History is magical theory. PE is a joke.

They have nothing in common with the place, with the mundane. They can't stand it here.

Monday is a bad day at school.

Dipper isn't certain what happened first. He's talking to a teachers about one of his assignments – he hasn't turned many of them in and this one might have gotten switched with one of his personal projects, or maybe he just decided that numbers aren't real again. It's a little hard to tell because the entire page is filled with scribbles describing the outline of yet another containment ward, this one for powerful creatures or animals with a physical form – when the link goes blank. White.

Dipper bolts from the room, following the link of winter rage and ice. His teacher calls, probably. He can't quite hear over Mabel's storm. But he follows the pull to one of the upper parking lots, through a horrified, shouting ring of students, and latches onto Mabel's middle just as she launches herself at a pair of bleeding, equally enraged high school boys. He's almost pulled off his feet before he can stick them both to the ground with a little bit of magic. Not a spell. He can't risk a spell. His eyes light up like some cheap Halloween display, blue-silver and glowing, and he's aware enough to know how bad _that_ would be.

The magic only lasts long enough for his touch to center his sister – she coils in his arms, ready to spring again at the slightest provocation, but she's still – and assess her for injuries. There aren't any. The icy white of her rage across the link isn't stained the yellowyellowyellow he associates with pain. Her pain. The blood on her skin belongs to the boys huddled at the far end of the ring of students.

Those two are breathing hard, glaring and bruised, but nothing's broken yet, or ruptured, so maybe Mabel was aware enough to not use her full strength. Even without runic enhancements, Mabel is a force of nature.

The offense to his defense.

This is, of course, when the teachers arrive, breathless and panting from a run up several flights of stairs and the heatwave now swallowing the coast, to break up a fight that has already ended. Not that they could have stopped Mabel. Not that Dipper would have left more then a bloody smear on the pavement had he found his sister in pain.

There's noise enough and confusion that even Dipper loses track of what's up for a minute, which is, of course, when Mabel loses what little hold she has on reality and the world flips upside down and yellow-brown, the sky under their feet dripping into space-form, gravity leaking like so much water through a sieve into a pale expanse of stars, blackness nipping at her heels as they fall. Adrenalin still high, her stomach can't take the vertigo and she pukes on one of the puffed up birds posing as a constellation.

They're sent home.

Coincidentally, the head librarian is also sent home, if only to clean off the vomit and change clothes.

They don't stay at home long. Mom only came to get them from school and quickly had to rush back to work, leaving the twins alone with only the paltry, pulsing comfort of their brand new wards. They slip out of the house as soon as it's too dark to see clearly, summer heat still lingering despite the fact the it's November and it really should be getting cold.

Dipper keeps a firm hold on Mabel's hand. He's less good at grasping the link forged between them, but manages to twist it enough to wrap reassurance around her shoulders like a shroud. Not touching, not sinking in, but a comforting arm. A hug. Mabel can manipulate the link as if she's been doing it all her life. In all probability, she could use the link to crawl inside his mind and stay there. Safe. Out of touch with whatever reality she's forced to experience. She doesn't though. Dipper is careful not to show how grateful he is for that. One instance of demonic possession was enough to keep him a desperate believer in bodily autonomy.

Instead, she cuddles into the it and clings to his hand. Sometimes, in the brief moments like this – discounting the part where they're walking down a deserted street at close to midnight – he feels like her older brother. Not the five minute difference she used to shove in his face – he'd love to hear her chant _Alpha Twin_ again – but years older. Like she's a small child in need of protection.

Dipper knows very well that the only protection Mabel needs is emotional. Whereas he sacrificed physical strength for magical, she never had that potential. Or, rather, she did, once, and it was ripper from her like everything else. She still came out of it all able to defend them more in both worlds than he ever could in one.

"You're thinking too hard, Bro Bro."

"Just that you could kick my ass." His frankness startles a laugh out of her. She jabs her fingers into his side and he _squeaks_ , pulling away because _that tickled_ and they are not getting into a tickle fight while attempting to run away. That is possible the silliest way to get caught ever.

For just this moment, wrapped up in each others minds, walking alone together down night-abandoned streets, reality settles into something they can both see. Both feel. And for just this moment, everything is fine.

They'll find their way to Grunkle Stan and Uncle Ford. They'll find a way up to Gravity Falls and they'll find a way to stay there. Forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Revised February 10


	9. Wildcat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> that which is noted for its ferocity

2 November 2012 – Tuesday

It's not even dawn by the time they hit Wildcat Canyon, the sun still several hours from rising. They wasted some time in a twenty-four hour convenience store, taking advantage of the groggy, teenage clerk's apathy in order to buy several large bottles of water and some high energy snack food. They don't each much in general, accustomed to living off magic and desperation, but it's appropriately 600 miles to Gravity Falls. Even at their own pace that's nearly two weeks away, not counting the detours around major cities and the time they'll have to spent hiding from authorities and other attentive adults.

If they keep to the relatively large magic deposits – there's one at the northern end of the canyon, another somewhere around Grizzly Bay, and again just north of Sacramento – during the day and only travel long distances by night, it'll take them around a month to reach their final destination.

A month.

This thought slips between them as they traverse the beginnings of the regional park in the dark. Certainly this is not the first time they've had to do such a thing. The weather's nice – temperatures breaching sixty and the air dry, none of San Francisco’s infamous fog reaching past the cities between the bay and the park. Nothing is actively hunting them. It's only mildly challenging working without a brighter light source than a mostly full moon and brief flashes of starlight through the trees. They don't even have to worry about disguising their tracks through the shrubbery and have to worry even less once they hit a main trail around four am.

Far below them, a creek burbles in its struggle to stay alive during this endless summer.

Mabel eases off Dipper's arm as reality settles into something blue and green and breathing, but the illusion is quiet and she can almost see the ground through the rippling grasses that aren't there and the gentle sensation of water – an easing back and forth flow of waves just off a coast, as if she were swimming and her toes just barely brush the sandy ocean floor – against her skin.

“Thank you,” she whispers, fingers soothing an apology across the bruises she knows will soon decorate her brother's arm. _For stopping her_ , she doesn't say. _For getting her out. For coming with her. For looking for her even after he found her._ If she doesn't specify, she can thank him for everything he's ever done for her. If she doesn't specify, she only has to say two words. It bothers her, sometimes, when she can think clearly, that gratitude is so challenging now. This is her _brother_. Her Dipper. It used to be that praise and love and thanks flowed from her mouth without thought, without effort. Now it's – hours after the incident, a month since the end of the catastrophe – it's a struggle to even get those two words out.

“I would have let you,” he murmurs in response, hours later. She knows that to be true. Had she fought his hold for even a second, he would have let her shred those boys. If there had been any real injury to them – her memories of the fight are blurry and the period of time before it started is blank, but she knows there was only some soft tissue damage – he would have allowed her to continue. But their first impulse is always to ground each other. To assume that the other is aware of the situation and only needs a touch to center, refocus, before continuing the assault.

That's been their way for years.

She does, however, know her brother's mind better than she knows her own these days. She can feel the swell of _guilt-exhaustion-anxiety-guilt_ even as he tries to squirrel it away from the link and she finds, with the ocean twining around her in a soft push-pull and the grasses swirling non-existent beneath her feet, that this pisses her off. Because Dipper – Dipper is her hero. Her life. He's the reason she's still alive even, let alone in this reality, so, no, he doesn't get to go feeling _guilty_ , like he hasn't done _enough_ , like the tragedy that is their life hasn't damaged him as well.

Mabel knows – she knows, okay, she knows first hand and is miserably, painfully aware – that her traumas are rather, well, noticeable is a good word. Detectable. Perceptible. Discernible. Apparent. Evident. When something startles her, her first instinct is to kill it. Attack. It doesn't work well when it's an illusion, and is horrible, terrible, worse when the illusion overlaps with a person. A real living person like that one customer from the Shack who wandered where he shouldn't.

She's gotten real good at killing things.

But Dipper. Dipper spent so much time taking care of her that his traumas didn't come out the same. Of course they didn't. They're different people, twins or not. Mind-sharing or not. But she knows maybe better than he does the edge of white-hot panic, star-bright and too intense, that sears into his mind whenever they're separated for more than five minutes. She knows how trying this school garbage has been on him because he leaps towards violence the same as she does when they're kept from touching for more than an hour. He's twitchy and snappish and his hold over his magic wavers on a constant precipice, only truly under his command when he's using it, and he has this strange little habit of trying to walk though walls before he is reminded – usually in an abrupt and painful manner – that both he and the wall are solid.

“Bro Bro.” Mabel stops walking and places the rising sun at her back, the sky blushing faintly in hues of pink and purple. A scowl twists over her face, but her eyes stay fixed on his. “Bro Bro, stop that. None of this is your fault.” The link flares in denial, but she continues before he can even open his mouth. “None of this is your fault, okay? You were the one to find the portal home. You were the one to pull me out of _there._ You were the one who gave me my mind back, my body back –” She yanks up the sleeve of her sweater to display the intricate network of glyphs scarred into her skin. The scarring takes up every square inch of space from behind her ears to the soles of her feet. “This is you, Dipper. You brought be back, rebuilt me, and – shutup – none of this is ever going to be your fault.”

She glares, nose inches from his, until the link and his face settles into something akin to resigned acceptance and they begin walking again. They've had this argument countless times since she came back to herself. Always, always, he accepts her words and allows her the win, but his traitorous thoughts push and push until he is again a hopeless puddle of guilt.

It's annoying.

It really wasn't his fault. What happened to her – Dipper never comes up in her nightmares of that time unless he, too, is strapped to the table while... She knows he was there. She saw flickers of him, occasionally. Panicked and mostly translucent, he'd float around her head and try to stoop them. Him? She doesn't remember if _He_ was there or if it was someone, something else. Dipper tried so hard to stop it from happening. But her brother is mostly useless at manipulating the physical world from the mindscape.

That was back when the reality bleed was new. Mabel only saw him in stills, there and gone again like those really old movies. Or the picture 'movies' kids draw in the corners of books during class. Pretend animation. Then he was real again, solid, in his body and trying desperately to free her from the bindings. But the magics trapping her were foreign and powerful. Advanced. Too advanced for a boy who only discovered magic existed a couple of months previous. He was found and couldn't pretend to be _Him_ on account of neither glowing nor being impervious to pain.

They banished him.

The twins don't know how long they were separated. Time, they discovered upon returning to Gravity Falls, doesn't work the same throughout the multiverse. It certainly never kept a consistent pace wherever they were. Grunkle Stan's assurances that they were only gone a month only served to further cement this theory.

By seven, they've ambled their way through most of the canyon and decide to sit at the top of Mezue trail to watch the sun finish rising. Or, rather, they put their backs to sun and the trees it hides behind to watch the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge appear out of the dark and fog. They eat a bit, each nibbling on a granola bar, and split one of their bottles of water.

The sun warms them, warms the air around them, with every inch is crawls through the sky. It brings with it just the faintest hint of smoke before the trees behind them burst into an inferno of oranges and reds and _heat_ with such force that it sends to two kids toppling into the dirt. They stumble further back even as they turn, the roar of flames singeing them, flushing skin red and dry before they can make it to the relative safety of the sloping hill on the other side of the trail.

Mabel, blinking moisture into her eyes, peaks for just a second at where they were sitting and almost chokes on the fire-thickened air. Coughing, she whispers, “Dipper, are those _salamanders?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone go check out edwardelric49 on diviantart for they made me fan art and I am happy. Go do this now.
> 
> revised Feb 12


	10. Salamander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grouping: Mythological  
> Subgroup: Fire Spirit, Elemental  
> Habitat: Fire

2 November 2012 – Tuesday

The Journal has an entry on Salamanders. It's rather vague, amounting to roughly half a page of rumors and questions, and another half page of various legends that have popped up over the years. All in all, aside from a greater understanding of how magic actually works, it probably contains less information than a Wikipedia article on the subject.

The twins, too, have heard their fair share of stories about all sorts of creatures, Salamanders included.

One legend claims that Salamanders can put out any flame with simply because their bodies are so cold. The twins are fairly certain isn't true considering the inferno hot enough that most of the smoke is unable to escape without also catching fire and the dirt crackles and wavers, close to glowing. Other legends say that being smeared with Salamander blood, drinking the blood or a potion made with the blood, or wearing Salamander skin will grant a person immunity to fire. This has slightly more credibility, but some of those same legends propose that a Salamander is a creature made entirely of fire. Therefore, it cannot have any blood or skin.

In a strange twist, one group of people tried to convince the twins that Salamanders were actually small white birds, a relative to the phoenix.

One rumor whispered about the Salamander eating fire. Another attributes them with poison instead of flame, which would fit well with their more mundane namesakes.

Sliding haphazardly down an embankment, the twins can safely say that Salamanders are, in fact, of the fire. They are also quiet solid given the way the creatures are slipping on their ponderous way down the hill. On top of that, they are approximately the size and shape of a Komodo Dragon – although the exact dimensions are hard to see while the animal is buried in flame and the observer is running away – and their bodies are definitely hot enough to melt rock. Given this and their coloring – cracking matte black with glossy scarlet and patches of orange-red – it's safe to say that they probably live in volcanic areas.

Oh, and judging from the teeth, it's also probable that they're carnivorous.

At some point when they are not in danger of being burned alive, Dipper is going to figure out how amphibians, a cold-blooded species that spends at least half of their lifespan in or around water, became associated with fire.

"Don't feel like trying to punch one in the face?" Dipper gasps, teasing despite the imminent threat to their lives.

"That was _one time,_ Dipper!"

He laughs at her – once really means more than six and punching dragons, which she only did once, doesn't really work what with their scales being impervious to pretty much everything – and she yanks him bodily over a fallen tree and into a dry creek bed. They're under the cover of trees again and despite the encroaching blaze at their backs, the twins are able to move faster than the predators again, nimble feet and legs better at traversing shrubbery and roots than the stocky Salamanders. Soon, soon, soon they'll be at the creek, the real creek, that burbles invitingly down the canyon.

Soon, but not soon enough, as the heat alone threatens to set alight their clothes.

Salamanders. Stubborn, bull-headed creatures that will travel in a straight line to whatever happens to have caught their interest, melting or burning everything and anything that's in their way.

Good to know.

Dipper twists around, Mabel steadying him before he even begins to move, and casts a word with hands outstretched and eyes glowing. A shield shimmers into existence several meters before them. It digs gouges into the rocky ground, slicing through roots and stone alike in an effort to hold back the flames. The Salamanders hit it just moments after its creation, pressing, pushing, straining. Dipper grunts, sweating under the force of their will, their hunger, but the spell holds.

The shield holds.

This – the part where they're staring down some creature or other that probably wants to kill and or eat them – this is normal. By now, this is easier than breathing, makes breathing easier, because they've been doing it for so long now.

“If every day is this interesting,” Mabel quips, “it's going to take a long time to get to Gravity Falls.” Idly, she stomps out a stray bit of grass fire. Dipper snorts. “I hear California's been having some wildfire problems. Think they're the cause or were just attracted here?”

Her brother hums in thought, leaning more fully against her supporting shoulder. “The San Andreas is close to here. Could be they accidentally slipped through when the ley lines shifted last week.” He grunts again as the large one, nearly ten feet long from nose to tail and probably around three hundred pounds of molten rock disguised as an animal, slams into the shield.

“And how, exactly, are we going to get them back where they came from?” Dipper shoots her a glare for her tone which she matches with an impish grin. “Or, we could, you know –”

“No, Mabel.”

“– keep them as pets –”

“Mabel.”

“– or maybe shrink them until they're real salamander sized –”

“Mabel, why.”

“– and keep them in little jars like fireflies or fairy lights.”

Dipper makes a mildly enraged roaring noise that is echoed by the largest Salamander, but Mabel's too busy giggling into his shoulder. Once, just after they were sucked into the portal, she tried to keep some dangerous, probably people-eating creature as a pet. Guard dog. Well, not so much a dog as an elephant-sized, vaguely cat-shaped thing with feathers. And lots of teeth. It was neon blue, which Dipper claimed meant it was poisonous, and actually adorable with how much it cuddled. Only, it turned out that the elephant-sized ones were about three weeks old, and the parents really weren't happy having anything mess with the babies. Since then, Mabel has made of point of taking the most dangerous thing around and attempting to convince her brother that they really need to keep it as a pet.

Salamanders, while certainly not the most dangerous thing they've ever come across, are the most dangerous thing she's seen while in Piedmont.

Still, while it makes him happy to know that she retains some of that ridiculous attitude, they're not keeping the Salamanders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> revised February 13


	11. Mabel v. Rock Troll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Versus, as opposed to Verses

Chapter 11 – Mabel v Rock Troll

8 November 2012 – Monday

Dipper presses his hands, glowing a dim blue-silver, into an oozing, infected burn on a … well, he isn't certain what species his patient is at the moment. He can barely see past the spiderwebs obscuring his vision to the wound and the magic he casts. Even this – heat to burn out the infection and a boost to the cells to quick start the healing process – pulls on magic he no longer has. It pulls from his blood, from his bones and leaves behind an empty ache.

Exhaustion. He's all too familiar with the sensation. Those three or four high level spells he cast...however many days ago he happened to cast them when getting rid of the Salamanders cost him. But there are a surprising number of creatures living in the canyon and almost all of them have been affected by the Salamanders. Neither twin could stand to see such suffering. Not again. Not after the sands of Kaedekith burned around them for weeks and only had Dipper's waning supply of magic kept them from dying of dehydration. There was nothing they could do then for the multitude of creatures living in those deserts.

The fairies came to them first, chittering about the burrowing ones and the lighted one and the soft ones and the home ones. They spoke of calling an old one for the flames, that the wet one has been losing territory with the long dry, and that the small ones are gathering near the wet one's home.

Mabel went with a few of the glowing specs to find the lighted one and Dipper staggered along the near-molten trail the Salamanders left, digging a family of Kobold – a cousin of Dwarves – out from a collapsed, partially melted mine shaft. The Bluecaps working with them were not so fortunate and only one got out alive. A young Grootslang, native to South Africa and probably brought along in the same fault-shift as the Salamanders, hissed what would probably amount to dire threats if anyone around was able to understand it. Dipper sent them all down towards the creek with a small fairy guide and rather hoped no one chose to eat anyone else. He had just finished checking what he could when Mabel returned with the lighted one and the old one.

The lighted one, a unicorn foal that barely comes up to Mabel's waist, trotted at his sister's side, nosing at her pockets. He was intrigued, for just a moment before the numerous injuries and creates call his attention, in the foal's coloring. It's pale lavender, edging darker towards its hooves, with a sunshine yellow mane. The bit of fluff at the end of it's long, thin tail is bright orange, flickering over the ashy ground like a bit of ember.

The old one, too, captured his attention. A phoenix. A phoenix living – probably – along the coast of California. Dipper doubted it was dragged over in the fault-shift with how old it looks – ruby feathers like dimming coals in a bed of ashes. But still. A phoenix. The bird gave no indication that it wanted to rend them limb from limb. It was certainly big enough to succeed with a beak as large as Dipper’s hand and talons the length of his fingers. It stood next to Mabel and the foal, head even with the girl’s shoulder, ocher eyes glaring at the decimated surroundings.

One of the fairies pushes a scrap of something edible into his mouth while others still entice him to sip from a makeshift cup. His hands hang limp against his muddy, bloody thighs, but the creature he was working on is no longer there. No longer. There are more. So many more. The untreated around them wail their agony. Further out, those they couldn’t find whimper their deaths to a merciless sun.

It should, he supposes, be cold. He thinks it might be November, maybe, and that Novembers are supposed to be full of cold winds and rain. But it’s not. Instead, the sun burns heavily on his already peeling shoulders, shirt long since discarded, worked from clothing to bandages. Mabel’s too.

Mabel.

Dipper stretches the bond, unable to open his eyes to look after so long – how long he doesn’t know, the days and memories blurring together into something incomprehensible after the first few hours of non-stop healing. His sister’s there, though. A pale shadow of waning energy and a dim network of glimmering runes. He knows – he thinks, supposes, infers – that she’s let him borrow from those energies once or twice. Yet his blood is boiling, the last vestiges of his strength rapidly evaporating with the bright sparks of pain flaring up in his bones.

Mabel’s moving around, though. Better than he is, at least. Last he saw, memory blurry, she was stumbling from injured creature to injured animal, wrangling those less wounded to help care for others. The foal, the lighted on, the little unicorn stayed pressed against her side, propping her up and seeking comfort all at once.

Other creatures. Dipper recalls the phoenix, the old one, screeching challenge at the salamanders as it kept the fires at bay. Maybe the heat is just the great bird or the fire or the salamanders circling their camp of wounded, tasty food. Mabel, a fantastic mediator when it comes to getting obscure creatures on different levels of the food chain, cannot get the embodiment of fire coupled with the mind of a carnivorous lizard, to work with others.

As if thinking about them attracted their attention, one of the salamanders screams, high-pitched and pained, while the others roar defiance. There’s another scream. The other animals, the creatures, injured or no, fall silent. Dipper wrenches his eyes open, blearily tracing the wall of fire and trees that defines their little camp.

Another scream and there is no more roaring.

Dipper’s heart sound too loud in his ears, drowning out the crackle of flames as he tries to listen for any sign of the salamanders. His breath is a heavy, shallow rush of air in and out of overworked lungs.

Nothing.

Mabel heaves herself to her feet. He doesn’t catch the motion so much as the bright flare of red. In his mind’s eye, she lights up a searing white, only a faint pink streak, like poorly covered paint, to indicate her physical form.

The glyphs. Glyphs and runes and scars all etched into her skin and embedded there with magic, powerful magics, for the sole purpose of keeping her safe, keeping her sane, keeping her with him. She lets him borrow the power off them, sometimes, when he really needs it. He hates doing it.

The runes need recharging, after all. If he’s to the point of using power set aside for his sister’s continued health, what will she be left with to keep herself safe with? He used it before, now, unwilling to let those around him remain untreated and Mabel would have hit him, probably not, if he left them alone. They only had to deal with the salamanders.

Salamanders.

A phoenix screams at them and they back off, keep to the burning forest.

And here, at the broken edge of their camp, is the creature that killed those salamanders. A twelve foot tall slab of granite and quartz looms over them, over the hush of fear-paralyzed beings. It’s broad, too, shoulders at least as wide as Dipper is tall. One of its hands - there are six, of course, because why wouldn’t there be? - could curl around his chest and overlap finger and thumb. Or, what he supposes are finger and thumb, as there are only three appendages where fingers would be on the hand-like protrusions.

Dipper blinks slow and exhausted, unable even to summon adrenalin despite being confronted by a fully grown rock troll. The spiderwebs again spindle their way across his vision.

“These are mine, Troll,” Mabel growls. Her patterns shift across their bond into something of challenge, resignation, determination. Doubtless, that’s what the troll sees as it roars, the sound of thunder and landslides shaking that muddy ashes at the bank of the creek and lifting the loose stuff into a veritable storm. All of Mabel’s power compresses into a tight ball at the center of her chest. More the white, it burns, tearing star-bright across Dipper’s inner sight without care or compassion, bursting out in a nova of light and sound as Mabel roars back, an avalanche of cold possession.

Already, the drain of the glyphs leeches away at her emotions. What little is left of the Dipper that existed before Gravity Falls thinks that perhaps it’s a good thing the Mabel has no magical potential of her own. The Dipper of now, quarter dead and fogged over with pain, crushes the thought almost before it comes to be.

He blinks heavy eyes open just enough to see the troll swing a fist at at his sister and follow it with another that seems too fast for the size it is. She dodges, leaping and twisting her way through the barrage of boulder masquerading at life. She’s small and light and lithe beneath the pale, skinny trauma of her body. The power-glow of the glyphs cycles through with her blood, faster and faster, lending more strength to the already terrifying physical prowess. Hairline cracks splinter granite with each strike she makes, her feet leaving divots like bruises where she leaps off its arms or legs.

She is not fast enough to avoid an unexpected backhand that sends her flying into a still burning copse of trees.

Dipper screams.

Dipper screams and reaches out and tries to stand at the same time, but mostly end up falling on his face. He can't move. Knows he's pale and anemic and has probably burned through any fat reservoirs he once had. Knows he’s a shade off dying but doesn’t care, can’t care. He hurts, a bone-deep pain that's more stabbing than aching. Bled completely dry of magic. Any more and he'll probably end up giving himself an aneurysm. He tries though. Pulls until his gums bleed and his eyes burn, sparking blue but never more. Never the brilliant glow Mabel says engulfs him sometimes. His ears start ringing as he manages to gather that spark of power in his palm.

The world collapses black before he can do anything with it.

Mabel's enraged shriek can be heard clear down the valley as she surges from the ashes and flames. DipperDipperDipper her mind chants, but the troll is between her and him, taking advantage of her momentary absence to advance on the injured creatures. Her charges.

Her brother.

It's standing between her and her brother.

She drains the glyphs, pulling and pulling and pulling until there is nothing left for them to give and still she demands more even as she charges headfirst the hulk of stone given life. At the last second she duck under an incoming hand, pivots, and slams both feet into the thing’s knee with a burst of power. Stone against her unbreakable will, it shatters. She lets momentum skid her under the toppling beast, toes and fingers digging into powder then dirt as she turns just enough to leap, an impact of fury and pain on animal instinct.

The troll crumbles around her. Mabel hits the ground hard amids and gravel and falling chunks of rock, dead to the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 10-18


	12. Alternative Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a strange way of being alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find it amusing the DDAMD validated Mabel's "Can we keep it?"

"What the - John! Call an ambulance! There's a couple kids over here!"

Dipper? Mabel struggles to open her eyes, ignoring the bee-drone color shift that comes with a sudden influx of people. She's thirsty. So, so thirsty. But that doesn't matter. Dipper. Where's Dipper? He was right next to her. She coughs and manages to inhale more ash than air, choking and sputtering as the ground shatter underneath her with the arrival of a yellow man.

Yellow. Yellow. Bad. Yellow is bad. Yellow is  _pain._

Mabel ignores her protesting lungs, desperate for air that isn't polluted with ash or smoke, and flings herself away from the yellow, scrabbling backwards through still-hot piles branches and twigs, frantic now in her search for her brother. This yellow man isn't Dipper. Dipper isn't tall, isn't broad. That means  _He_ isn't in Dipper, but that could always change.  _He_ wants Dipper. Wants him more than any other mortal shell. Told her  _Himself._  

Her hands hurt, but she can't tell if the pain is real or from the amber-green spikes the yellow man is sending out. Dipper. Where's Dipper? He has to be here. She has to protect him. 

"Easy, easy," the yellow man says. He lifts bear-paw hands and removes his head, revealing a dark face, flushed and lined with sweat and dirt, but it's  _wrong,_ he's  _wrong._ She just doesn't know how. "Hey, there. Easy, now. I'm Chris." Lies, lies,  _lies, all lies!_ Two eyes and a mouth, human, but yellow, yellow,  _yellow._ He leaves his head on the ground. Begins pulling off his paws as he crouches in the soot. "Easy there, kiddo, I'm not going to hurt you."

Lies. She's waiting for the slip. For the static voice.  _Hey there, Shooting Star._ She snarls at him, teeth bared, and backs into a tree when he shuffles forward.

"Chris, the ambulance is on the way. Need help getting the kids up - " Another yellow man, smaller, further away, appears at her right. He's one top of the hill, but she' can't watch both at once, and  _screams,_ clawing that the flaking tree.

The yellow man, the first yellow man, shouts, "John! Get back!" but the words are garbled, meaningless. Lost in the roar of vermillion cracking through the sky. Still, the second yellow man disappears, the space he was in filling with a washed out blue that tastes of pineapples.

The first yellow man begins shedding skin, peeling apart his chest cavity to reveal black innards. He slither out of his legs as well. Jeans. A t-shirt. Arms just as dark as his face. The yellow skin piled at his feet. Two eyes. A mouth. 

"There we go, kiddo." She can here him. Sorta. A distant, fuzzy noise like an old tv the next room over. "I need you to take a breath, little one. You need to breathe. Nice and easy now." He keeps eye contact, on predator to another. There is no challenge between a snake and a... whatever she is. He is a snake. A snake with legs and feet trapped in socks, crouched a dozen or so feet from her. Strange looking snake. She takes a breath and it soothes some of the ache in her chest. She makes a conscious decision to continue breathing. "Good girl. Good girl."

The snake shuffles forward a little more and she growls at it. It stops moving. She holds its gaze for a moment more, just to make certain it won't move again, and looks around again. Upright, she can see more than she could before, and Dipper is an identifiable gray lump among the ash. Moving. Breathing. Alive. Of course he's alive. Dipper isn't going to die from something so silly as magical exhaustion. Carefully, keeping half an eye on the snake, she edges off the tree and almost immediately crumples to the ground. The snake jerks, but holds position. 

Crawling takes a lot of effort. She does it. Scraping across the ground to her brother until she can collapse against his side. Things settle. A little. He's not awake and that makes it harder, but physical contact broadens the link between them. She can breathe a little easier, a little less forced.

"Kiddo?"

"Chris! The ambulance is here."

"Send them down. Slowly."

Ambulance. A large white box that screams and feels like sandpaper on open wounds whenever one passes by. Ambulance. Doctors. A cool, pink paste - false calm - that oozes over everything. It crystallizes in shades of fuchsia and rose. Good news. Bad news. But Dipper's hurt. Her hands, pressed against his arm, are the wrong shape. Fingers twisted, scraped, bloodied. She's fairly certain it's not supposed to bend there. Or be quite that purple. Bruised. A physical manifestation of pain. Injury. Dipper's hurt. She's hurt. Doctors fix that, right?

Mabel allows the paramedics - red and white, like peppermints, but they smell more like Lima bean worry - to pull her away from her brother and stays limp as they deposit her on a stretcher. Dipper receives the same treatment and they are carried up the hill. 

They relocated the Salamanders by virtue of keeping them trapped until the giant lizards grew bored and left. Some form of fire teleportation, which is probably how they got to California anyway. By then, it was nightfall, and the twins had gone through all their water. Mabel probably would have been able to slip into a nearby town for a refill, but she was completely unable to leave Dipper's side one the fire jumped the road. Boxed in and with Dipper dangerously low on magic, the twins had little choice but to continue on and hope they reached water before dehydration consumed them.

Of course, nothing ever goes to plan. Mabel got blindsided by the panic-pain-fear of a unicorn foal. The Salamanders were, apparently, the type of creature to save food for later if the ring of fire around the tiny horse was any indication. It went on from there - a nest of fairies caught in the burning trees, a few foxes, a stray dog, a naiad beached and wounded by a fallen tree. Night bled into day and back into night. The heat of the sun grew endless when the fires only grew at night, burning hotter with every gust of valley-driven wind. They ate standing and drank from the river with full permission of its residents. Their every hour, every minute, was spent rescuing and healing every creature they could find.

That is, until the rock troll appeared; hungry and looking for an easy meal, it fixated on their little camp. What better source of food than one too injured to run away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT! Do you guys want Mabel being kickass next or an outsider chapter?


	13. Part 4 - Outsider: Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a place of medicine, sickness, and death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note to self: October 17

The call comes at 3:24 am. Not from the police, contacted immediately after learning the twins never arrived at school and were not in the house. Nor does it come from the hospital over in Richmond. Rather, it's from a man who says his name is Stanford Pines, but sounds nothing like the Stan Mrs. Pines knows. There's something off about his voice, a different quality of pitch or tone or maybe inflection. She really isn't sure. It's three in the morning. She hasn't been sleeping well. Her kids are  _missing_ and have been for a week.

"Dipper woke up and gave them Stan's number," Stan is saying, which makes zero sense, but Stan is crazy so she lets it go. Mr. Pines is sitting up now, blinking fuzzily into the light from her bedside lamp. It was an automatic action: click on the light, grab the phone. He's been sleeping less than she has, guilt ridden and certain he was the one to chase the twins away. "Look, Stan's on his way down, he should be there tomorrow, but he thought you two might want to know the kids are... alive."

Alive. The kids are alive. Dipper woke up and the kids are  _alive._ That is the most reassuringly horrifying thing Mrs. Pines has ever heard. They're  _alive._ Not okay. Not healthy. Not all in one piece. Just  _alive_ which could mean anything from slightly dismembered to beaten and bloody. What are the crime rates in Richmond? She doesn't know. Can't remember. Probably horrible if the kids are merely  _alive_ and why was there no mention of Mabel? What happened to her baby girl? Dipper woke up and Stan said kids, meaning two, but does that mean Mabel  _isn't awake?_ Why isn't Mabel awake?

Why would Dipper give them Stan's number? Stan, who lives in Oregon and is too far away to get anywhere quickly. Especially since he's been banned from airports. Can't fly down, so he'll have to drive, and even breaking every traffic law in existence, that'll take at least six hours and  _where is Mabel?_

Mr. Pines takes the phone from her hand, getting the name of the hospital and any other information he can dig out of the man. The he places the phone down, takes her hands, and says, "The kids will need a change of clothes; go get those while I start the car?"

With the direction, Mrs. Pines can focus, ease down on the panic. She slides out of bed and into clothes marginally more acceptable for being out in public than one of her husband's old shirts. Then she enters Dipper's room.

It occurs to her now that, even though the kids have been missing for a week and back in town for far longer, she hasn't gone into either of their rooms. Even when they were checking the house, they didn't do more than glance in. Now - Dipper's room is wrong. Different. He's always been a quiet kid, more interested in games and books than his incredibly energetic sister ever was. Now his walls are scratched over with strange symbols, odd pictures hang from a maze of string above his bed, and his and Mabel's desks carefully barricade the door. There's enough room to walk around, but there is no way for anyone to cross from one side of the room to the other without meeting some kind of barrier.

Taking a deep breath - ignoring the feeling deep in her gut telling her  _get out wrong bad leave intruder away leave -_  Mrs. Pines follows the path to the dresser and digs through a collection of what at a glance appears to be Mystery Shack merchandise to find a shirt. It's white with red lettering that reads  _Pterodactyl Bros._ over a picture of Dipper and a large man. It's obviously handmade and not Dipper's handwriting. It's also probably the only article of clothing that has actually been folded. He cares for it.

He cares for it.

He cares for it, so she takes it and a pair of pajama pants she remembers washing but hasn't seen him wear yet, so they're probably clean. Socks, underwear, and shoes follow. She doesn't know what he'll need, doesn't know what state he's - his clothes are in. Then she leaves. Doesn't run because there is no way for her to run through around the corner of their desks. She wants to though. The oppressive feeling of intrusion increases every second longer she spends in the room. Then it's gone. Lifted the second both feet are through the doorway.

Mabel's room is...

Mabel's room is - with the light on, she can see everything. The broken lamp. The dresser drawers tossed about, one or two broken into splinters. The bed on its side. Frame, headboard, and chest barricading the mattress pushed into the furthest corner of the room. The walls covered in rust-stained scratches. Some of them patterns, like in Dipper's room, carved there neatly by a knife. The others rough, crosshatched, and when Mrs. Pines runs her fingers over them in abject horror she  _knows._ Not rust. Not paint.

Blood.

Blood from where Mabel peeled up her fingernails clawing at the walls. Dented walls. Everything set to keep her in. The room destroyed. Her clothes scattered everywhere. Torn. Mangled. 

How did she never notice?

Sure, she knew things were bad. The nightmares, the screaming, Mabel's sudden aversion to food and clear dependence on her brother. How quiet she is now. But this bad? Clawing at the walls like an animal. Not noticing when her nails tear. When did this happen? How did this happen?

Out of the clothing on the floor, Mrs. Pines selects the same assortment that she chose for Dipper, including two of the less trashed sweaters. Blue and green. Bright colors, both of them. Pink flowers decorate the bottom hem of the blue one. The green one possesses a purple butterfly. At this point, Mrs. Pines doesn't think Dipper will care about the supposedly girly decorations. She's seen him wrapped up in Mabel-made sweaters before. It has nothing to do with how little she wants to reenter Dipper's room.

it's a long drive to the hospital. The roads are all but abandoned. They only pass a few trucks, drivers just starting their runs again or in for the long overnight. 

They are met, not by doctors or their children, but by stern-faced police officers, all of them tired and cradling paper cups of coffee. They are met, not with news, but with questions.

"When did your children run away?"

"Have your children ever committed arson before?"

All along the same lines until the words blur together and Mrs. Pines starts to cry, a combination of exhaustion, worry, and stress. "I just want to see my kids," she sobs into the awkward silence her tears created. "Where are my kids? I want to see my kids!"

A nurse, just as if not more tired than everyone in the room, appears from behind a desk. He leads them down several halls to a room guarded by a young woman who mostly appears to be holding up the wall. Dipper's inside looking small and young in the light blue hospital pajamas. His left hand his handcuffed to the rails. An iv pins his right arm. Bandages wrap around most of his exposed skin, disappearing underneath the clothing. 

There is only one bed in the room. 

No Mabel.

"Where's Mabel?" Dipper asks, stealing the words off Mrs. Pines' tongue. He's quiet, sitting up with his head ducked, glaring at them through his hair. His eyes are on the nurse, the police officer, and not his parents. "Where's my sister?"

"Marvel - "

"My name is Dipper. _Where is Mabel?"_ He yanks on the handcuff, eyes flaring blue in what is probably a trick of the light, but the metal  _bends,_ links straining and aluminum rails collapsing inwards. His right arm still hands limp by his side, legs crossed, but his left is clenches. He yanks again, metal screeching. "Where's Mabel? What are you doing to her? Where is she! Where is Mabel!"

"Dipper?" Mrs. Pines calls. She edges into the room towards the snarling boy. Blue-brown eyes latch on to her, lips pulling away from teeth in a parody of a smile. Dangerous. "Calm down, baby. Okay? Daddy'll find Mabel."

" _No!"_ he howls and the handcuffs snap. The boy launches himself out of the bed, ripping the iv from his arm, but only makes it a couple of steps before his legs give out. Then he's screaming. Thrashing on the floor and _screaming_ like the world's collapsing.

An answering shriek echoes from further in the hospital.

Dipper stills, panting. He stares at the door guarded by the nurse and Mr. Pines and the young police officer. " _Mabel!"_ he yells, once, and waits. Another shriek. Silence. A shouted string of curses trails in from the hallway, followed by exclamations of, "Shit!" and "Catch her!" Dipper grins, all animal superiority. It's not an expressions Mrs. Pines ever thought she'd see on her little boys face, but she's distracted by the ball of curls and teeth that barrels through the gathered guards and plows straight into Dipper on the floor. 

"Shh," the boy whispers. He pulls them back away from the shocked eyes of the adults. "You're okay now. I won't let anyone hurt you. Not again. Not again, Mabel. I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update 3/3 for this week.


	14. Part 5 - Outsider: Arson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this child, a boy, a son, ours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to point out now that my knowledge of medical shterf is limited to tv, childhood injuries, and shit that happened to my sister.

August Peters is thirty-four. He's been a nurse for eight years, six of which have been spent in Richmond, California. He's not the best nurse in the hospital – that title is reserved for the ancient but ever terrifying Bethany Colte three floors up. No. He's not the best, but he does know the ins and outs of the hospital. He knows which rooms have the best DVD players. Which of the long term care patients play poker and which will spit in his face for daring bring peaches for lunch instead of bananas. He knows how to soothe frazzled tempers and how to give squirming, frightened children shots without scaring them. All in all, he's good at his job.

He's not even finished punching in before the news hits.

Two kids were found in the remains of a wild, a boy and a girl. The firefighter that found them claimed that the girl was conscious, but not lucid, and that the boy was completely unresponsive. Currently, the kids are in recovery; the boy has minor wounds – some burns and lacerations – but is severely anemic and dehydrated. He's also about ten-fifteen pounds underweight, which is concerning, but apparently nowhere near as bad as the girl. She's at least twenty pounds underweight, dehydrated, and, on top of the minor burns and scrapes, has somehow managed to break most of the bones in her hands, both of her wrists, approximately half her ribs from some kind of head-on collision, and has fractured one shoulder as well as her left leg in several places.

Bruising indicates a beating or perhaps a fight, but the abrasions are reminiscent of getting hit by a car.

No one is certain, not even the man who found them, how she managed to move.

Still, John and Jane Doe are newly added to his roster, so August checks on them as he makes his rounds. The boy is hooked up to saline, an oxygen mask, and a heart monitor. No one is really certain why he's not waking up, but he's still breathing on his own so the doctors aren't too worried. It's marked on his chart - in the obscure language of medical professionals everywhere - that they'll run a scan if he hasn't woken up in twenty-four hours.

The girl is a mess. Tubes and wires and splints and wraps - everything beeping and monitoring and delivering drugs to keep her under. Beyond that are the scars. August doesn't want to believe his eyes at first - he's seen self harm on kids her age before. It's not all that uncommon. But this - this isn't that. Under the bruising and tape are rows upon rows of strange symbols and designs. Quietly, the back of his mind whispers that he is a professional. That, while this is quite possibly the most horrible thing he has ever seen - these marks were cared deliberately, neatly, by someone else, someone not this little girl - he has a job to do and that does not include gawking at an unconscious, heavily injured girl. He's seen scars and tattoos and scars designed to look like tattoos. Aside from the age of this girl, this isn't all that strange.

The marks, he notices, stop two inches above her wrist. They curve across her collarbone and down, disappearing under her bandage-wrapped chest to continue on below.

August checks the iv line and the saline. He reads her chart, ignoring, for the most part, the horrified note someone left about the scarring. The morphine drip, at this point and especially with her weight, should keep her under for a while longer yet, which is why it's so startling when he looks up and finds a pair of large brown eyes staring at him. He might jump. Just a little. Because this girl should be unconscious what with the drug or maybe in pain because of her injuries. Instead, she's just looking at him. Eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a think line, expression set just left of neutral. 

Very carefully, August doesn't jump. He replaces her chart at the end of the bed and turns to face her fully. "Hello."

It seems a good place to start. Given her condition and how she was found, it's probably best to start simple. That, and she's still on morphine. Sure, he'll eventually need her name, her parents' names and contact information, hopefully the name of the boy she was found with - right out the gate isn't the time to just into questions. 

She blinks. It's a deliberate blink, although he's unsure if she's forcing her eyes to focus or responding to him. Her gaze flickers over him. Face to hands to waist. Then it flutters around the room. Door, window, machines - she follows the iv line to her arm and down to her hands carefully set and wrapped in bandages. For a moment August thinks she's going to try moving them. She doesn't. He's grateful for that. Her gaze move back to the needle in her arm and she  _glares._

The glare transfers to him. "What," she snarls, lips peeled back from teeth. An animal growl torn straight from the throat of his neighbor's dog nips at the tail end of the word. August has seen people upset upon waking up in the hospital, but this - "What. What is!  _Tell!"_ She shouldn't be awake let alone articulate - kind of. Articulate enough to get an idea out at least. This isn't right. He'll have to check her morphine levels, check somethings, and tell her doctor right as soon as he can. Still, he answers.

"Saline. Antibiotics. Morphine."

"Why."

"You are hurt very badly and are dehydrated." Okay. The snarling has eased off. Time for a question of his own. "Do you remember what happened?" Maybe he should have asked if she is in any pain? No, wait, he should have asked her name. Ugh. Well, he can't take it back. He'll ask that next.

"Fire. Rock. There was yellow, but the snake shed its skin, became organic where before it was geometric." She trails off, contemplative.

August has heard toddlers make more sense than this girl, but at least she's speaking in sentences. And has a vague idea of what happened. There was indeed a fire. "Can you tell me your name, kiddo?" he asks. Again, he is pierced by brown eyes that flicker from face to hands to waist and back up. She's looking for something, he realizes. Every time he brings attention her himself, she checks. Makes certain he's not a threat.

What has this kid gone through?

"Maybe able, but everyone lies."

This kid is, quite possibly, getting less articulate as time goes on. Still, he has to try. "My name's August. That's not a lie."

"August. Eighth month. Gregorian calendar. Thirty-one days. We weren't home." Then, as if that was a trigger, she lurches herself into a ball and  _keens_ like the world is ending or her dog died. The keening turns to wailing, howling,  _screeching,_ one long and unending breath of noise almost guaranteed to wake everyone in the ward. 

There have been rumors. Rumors accidentally spread by the sleep deprived police officer lurking in the lobby. Rumors that say these kids are the cause of the fire just east of here. August doesn't want to believe it. He doesn't like thinking bad of anyone, especially kids. Especially kids this hurt. Because there is almost always someone else, someone older, that is the cause behind kids getting hurt like this. 

August eases around the bed, hushing the hysterical child within. He places a hand on her shoulder - not pulling or pushing or even encouraging her to lay down again so as to not further strain her broken ribs - comforting. She whips around faster than he can conceive and sinks her teeth past layers of skin into muscle and blood until they scrape against bone and she rips away. August doesn't - can't - register the pain until she's lunging for him again, bloodied maw and a howl burbling in her throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry?


End file.
